How to Make Savoury Mince

The dish we call savoury mince in our house is super versatile. It’s quite similar to bolognese, but with subtle variations you can turn it into, chilli con carne, lasagna, or cottage pie!

You will need:

• a sharp knife
• a chopping board
• a wok or deep saucepan with lid

and the ingredients (for four people):

• A little oil
• 2 medium onions
• 500g beef, lamb, or Quorn mince (a.k.a. ground meat)
• 1 bell pepper
• 2-3 carrots
• tinned chopped tomatoes
• tomato puree
• frozen peas or spinach
• mixed herbs
• salt

Start by placing your pan on a gentle heat. Add a little oil (less than a teaspoon is fine), and dice your onion. (You can find more detailed instructions here: onions)

Add your onion to the pan, along with a generous sprinkle of mixed herbs. (I often also add a little bit of garlic, but you don’t have to.)

Next, add your mince. Stir everything together, and break up any clumps of mince that are sticking together.

Dice your pepper (you can find the tutorial here: pepper), then add it to the pan.

Grate your carrots. (Remember to leave the top on to use as a handle while grating – you can find more tips in last week’s tutorial here.)

Add your grated carrot to the pan, followed by a tin of tomatoes. To make sure you’re not wasting any tomato-y goodness, rinse out the tin with a splash of water.

Mix everything together, and put the lid on. This helps the pan heat up quicker, and keeps the moisture in.

After 5-10 minutes, add a generous dollop of tomato puree. This makes the sauce richer; if you don’t have tomato puree you can use ketchup instead.

Your dish is nearly done, so make sure to taste your sauce. If it tastes like it’s lacking something, try adding a little salt or some more tomato puree.

Five minutes before serving, add your frozen peas or spinach to the pan.

Make sure to mix everything together before serving!

This version of savoury mince is perfect with pasta. But if you have any leftovers, it also makes great nachos!

Remember, this recipe is only a base, so feel free to play around with it! Try adding chilli or paprika to spice it up a little, or using some different herbs. You could add a tin of beans along with the peas, either to complement or replace the mince. Or you could try using different vegetables – why not add some mini broccoli florets, or even try parsnip instead of carrot?

If you make savoury mince with this recipe, I’d love to see a picture of your finished dish!

How to Chop an Onion – 2 Ways to Dice an Onion

If you haven’t already, please make sure you’re familiar with basic knife safety before starting this tutorial. (link) Please remember to give onions special consideration because of their shape, texture, and tendency to make your eyes water!

We’ve been gradually reducing the size of our onions – going from onion chunks (link), to onion slices (link), and now diced onion! Dicing onions is a great way to get a lot of flavour out of them in a short cooking time.

This tutorial contains two different methods to dice an onion. The first method is simpler, but it does take a little time. The second is so fast your eyes barely have time to water, but it is a more advanced technique.

Method 1

Start by chopping your onion into slices. Just follow the tutorial from last month (link), although you can skip cutting the onion into quarters and just slice the halves.

Once you have your slices, lay them down to dice. I like to cut a sort of lazy grid pattern, but you could also cut it into triangles (sort of like a mini pizza; see picture below).

To save time, you can cut through multiple slices at once. I would recommend you start with just one and work your way up slowly to find how many slices you’re comfortable chopping at once. Make sure if you’re stacking slices that you have the largest one on the bottom and the smallest on the top – it’s important that your stack doesn’t fall over during cutting.

 

Method 2

I actually learned this second technique from the anime sweetness & lightning. It’s a little tricky, because it involves breaking my second rule of knife safety (see my earlier post here). But it’s so much faster that I’ve diced onions this way ever since.

To start, remove the skin and top of the onion, but leave the root end on. (This will help the onion stay together as you chop it.) Cut the onion in half.

Next, cut into the onion towards the root end. You don’t need to cut all the way through, but you’ll need to use your non-knife hand to steady the onion.

Now cut downwards. You don’t need to cut right to the edges, because of the layers in the onion. I usually find just three cuts is plenty.

Finally, cut as if you were slicing the onion. Perfectly diced pieces of onion will simply fall off the end!

As you get towards the end of the onion, you may find that it starts to fall apart a bit. Hold it together if you can, but you can always deal with those parts that do fall off separately.

This technique definitely takes a bit of getting used to, but if you can master it it’s so worth it!

 

Diced onions can be used to add flavour to a huge variety of dishes, including stews, soups, and curries. They’re especially great in dishes where you want a little bit of everything in every spoonful.

You can fry diced onions in about 15-25 minutes, although it rather depends on how soft you like your onions! Onions can be eaten raw, or very well-done, so it’s really a matter of taste.

How to Chop an Onion – into slices

If you haven’t already, please make sure you’re familiar with basic knife safety before starting this tutorial. (link) Please remember to give onions special consideration because of their shape, texture, and tendency to make your eyes water!

The chunks of onion from our previous tutorial (link) are great for slow-cooking, but if you want fried onions then I like slices best.

 

 

 

 

Just like before, we want to take off the skin, top and bottom from the onion. You can start in the exact same way – chop off the root and the top of the onion, making sure to keep your fingers out of the way.

(For slices, you might actually want to leave the root end on for now – try it both ways and see which you prefer!)

 

 

Once you have a flat surface at one end of the ball, you can rest it there to cut downwards, slicing your onion in half. Then deal with each half in turn, starting with a cut right down the middle.

When you’re chopping onions, it’s a lot easier and quicker to work with if all the layers stay stuck together. So, when you’re slicing, work from the thin end(s) into the middle. And if you need to turn the onion around to get to the other end with your dominant hand, try turning the chopping board instead.

 

 

 

Although very thin slices of onion are so impressive (I’ve always loved watching chefs cut off super thin slices at top speed!), slices about half a centimeter (1/4 of an inch) thick are great for everyday cooking.

 

 

 

 

These onion slices take about 15-25 minutes to fry, although it depends how soft you like your onions! Onions can be eaten raw, or very well-done, so it’s really a matter of taste. They’re a great accompaniment to fried meats like sausages or burgers, or (my personal favourite) fish. And they’re a great source of flavour in a stir-fry, which we’re working towards this month!

How to Make Pot Roast Vegetables

Whether you’re making Sunday lunch, Christmas dinner, or just a warm winter treat, pot roast vegetables are melt-in-the-mouth delicious!

You will need:

• a sharp knife
• a chopping board
• an oven-proof dish
• an oven
• oven gloves

and the ingredients (for four people):

• 4 medium carrots (about the length of your hand)
• 2 medium onions
• 4 potatoes (about the size of your fist)
• ½ large or 1 small swede
• 1 large or 2 small sweet potatoes
• 1-2 parsnips
• dried mixed herbs
• salt
• oil

 

Start by turning on your oven to Gas Mark 4, 180° (160° fan).

Chop your carrots, onions, potatoes, and swede into chunks. (You can find more detailed instructions here: carrots, onions, potatoes, swede)

Put your chopped vegetables into your oven-proof dish.

Add salt, oil, and herbs to the dish. You just need to cover the vegetables in the dish, like in the picture below.

Stir or shake your seasonings and vegetables together.

Place the lid on your dish and put it into the oven. It will take about two hours to cook from here.

Chop your sweet potato and parsnip into chunks. (More detailed instructions here: sweet potato, parsnip)

After your dish has been cooking for about an hour, add your sweet potato and parsnip chunks. Give your veggies another good stir or shake together, but be careful – it’s hot!

After another hour in the oven, your dish will be ready to serve! Serve it alongside whatever source of protein you fancy – it goes fantastically with a huge range of meat and veggie options!

You can roast a huge variety of vegetables, this recipe is just the start! Feel free to play with the seasonings too – try adding pepper, or using sage, rosemary and thyme instead of a pre-made mix of dried herbs.

If you make pot roast vegetables with this recipe, I’d love to see a picture of your finished dish!

How to Chop an Onion – into chunks

If you haven’t already, please make sure you’re familiar with basic knife safety before starting this tutorial. (link)

Onions are full of flavour, which gets sweeter the longer you cook them. The chunks we’ll be chopping today are perfect for long, slow, cooking that brings out all the best in onions.

Onions can be a little tricky to chop, because of their round shape and smooth skin. I would recommend using a serrated knife to chop onions; if you prefer to use a smooth knife I would start each cut by piercing the onion with the tip of your blade.

 

 

Unlike carrots and potatoes, we don’t want to eat the skin of the onion. These dry, papery layers are best peeled off and discarded, and you can pull off any little rootlets from the bottom of the onion too. You might find that this is easier to do after you’ve started cutting the onion; as long as you take off the skin before cooking it doesn’t really matter!

The first two cuts are the trickiest – we want to chop the top and bottom off the onion. Make sure to hold the onion firmly on its side, but keep your fingers out the way!

 

 

 

You should now have a flat surface at the bottom of the ‘ball’, which you can rest the onion on to make the rest of the cutting safer. For these chunks, simply chop the onion in half straight down the middle. Cut each half in half again, then into quarters, and you’re done!

 

 

 

When you’re chopping or cooking onions, you might find that your eyes start to sting, burn, or well up. This is because sulphur-containing compounds that give onions a lot of their flavour can react with the water in your eyes to make sulphuric acid. If it becomes hard to see, it’s important that you don’t try and keep cooking – you’re likely to hurt yourself. You might find that washing your hands, knife or onion under clean water can help your eyes sting less; just make sure to pat everything dry before you go back to chopping.

 

These onion chunks are perfect for roasts, casseroles, and stews. They take about 2 hours to cook in an oven at Gas Mark 4 (180°C, 160°C in a fan oven). Once they’re cooked, onions become soft and the layers fall apart easily.

Roast onions are great with sausages!